u/chaugner

As an engineer (that has built GTM systems too lol) ... I would maybe draw a different analogy.

Devops to Engineering is the same as GTM "Engineering" to Sales.

In the Devops world, especially devops coming from more traditional IT centric worlds, its a lot of tools, tied tgoether via scripts and "engineering/devops" together with some lambdas here and there.

GTM engineering feels very similar, while there is code involved and pipelines, it is very much working with tools. I think what is changing, thanks to AI, is that you up the level of "code that does real work vs scripting together other tools", but I dont think GTM engineering is the same as "product engineering" where you deliver an end to end piece of software on its own. In software you often look at "buy vs build" ... GTM engineering is "always buy the tool but build the integration and some unique parts of the workflow"

Yeah the content lifecycle has changed. A lot of folks miss that. Take a buying lifecycle for example. Typically based on initial problem discovery before solution collaboration.

So during problem discovery, you are on AI only, and you need citations there (and of course weight and all that to get included/mentioned), but then once you go further into the buying cycle its about clicks and actual traffic.

Further in the buying cycle, its about getting someone to come ot you (you can track that), early in buying cycle its not, but you need to look at prompt tracking as a signal there. Same old for the intent management, informational (proimpt tracking), transactional (some prompt tracking but click tracking as well).

Context: Technical Founder @ demandvector

we are doing exactly that for brand clients for their channel marketing. Short version, AI has impacted marketing significantly but at the same time marketing is highly adaptable thanks to AI. Content generation at this point is commoditized so our "Human in the loop focus" is really just gating each orchestration piece. Wherever decisions are made, that fall outside of bands, human step in.

AI still doesn’t have the brand intuition and strategy that’s needed to make those big judgement calls

I think it does, AI itself in a single turn, session or agentic session may not, but correct context management, governance, provenance, lineage can empower brands to say "yay on that, nay on this".

And yeah fully agreed, the good old days of 15K agency are over, the good agencies adapt, still charge 15K but embed "marketing engineering" (I'd like to separate this from typical GTM engineering) and up the volume. Same as with AI engineering, code is easy, building the right product is hard. Same with marketing, content is easy, orchestrating and ensuring its the right content everywhere is still a but of a human touch.

Happy to chat more via DM if you want.

Oh 100% !! I love being able to IC now with LLMs, even with some of the new challenges, again, this is more a rant and some frustration BUT in the end - cannot imagine going back to ever coding by hand again. I just want March 2026 Opus back !! lol

Well yes using both but prob not on max paid plans !!! Keeping Claude for some work (still love claude design), but for coding will be using Codex mostly ... their new models are working quite well.

I further asked ChatGPT to up the level of pretentiousness ... a few times ... and it came out with this ... had a good giggle.

Ah, the 1999 Opus One—an unparalleled oenological magnum opus. This elixir's lustrous garnet robe, subtly veiled with an aristocratic brick-hued halo, heralds an olfactory odyssey of transcendental sophistication: an ambrosial interlace of celestial blackcurrant nectar and ethereal plums, suffused with the venerable aromas of ancient cedarwood, timeworn mahogany, and the ineffable ghost of antique pencil shavings. An earthy sotto voce of truffle and primordial loam intimates its patrician terroir.

The palate is a rhapsodic revelation of silken, almost sentient tannins, orchestrating a phantasmagoria of black cherry essence and blackberry quintessence. A labyrinthine interplay of aged Corinthian leather and sylvan underbrush unfurls, accented by an evanescent whisper of mocha and the arcane depths of espresso. The finish—a protracted, otherworldly echo of dark cacao and saccharine spice—lingers with an ineffable elegance, a transcendent testament to its Bordeaux-invoking, Napa Valley apotheosis. Verily, this is not mere wine but a liquid sonnet, a Dionysian rapture for the most discerning and erudite connoisseur.

I asked ChatGPT and here is the take ...

Ah, the 1999 Opus One—a sublime vinous masterpiece. Its garnet visage, tinged with brickish age, preludes an olfactory rhapsody: decadent blackcurrants and plums entwined with cedar, mahogany, and the ephemeral whisper of pencil shavings. A profound earthiness and truffle nuance hint at its aristocratic terroir.

On the palate, a symphony of velvety tannins and luxuriant black cherry compote unfolds, with echoes of leather, forest floor, and a tantalizing whisper of mocha and espresso. The finish, a lingering caress of dark chocolate and sweet spice, is an enduring testament to its Bordeaux-inspired, Napa Valley elegance—a liquid sonnet for the discerning oenophile.

now you ruined your “three times may” starting streak with march ….. maybe wait a few weeks before officially starting ;)

congrats

-$29,623.15 for the past 12 month here. This does NOT include food takeout or dine out, just groceries - HCOL 1 kid (soon to be VHCOL sigh).

A bit of a breakdown:

• $11,087.59 Costco

• $1500 Avg Each of these - Publix, Plum Market, Trader Joe, Foodtown, Fresh Market, Wild Fork, Whole Foods

• Rest is generally specialty stores, markets, etc.

We LOVE food to be honest, lots of cooking constantly. Its a hobby for wifey, (and eating for me lol). Our Little one is probably a bit spoiled when it comes to food as well. BMI levels normal though.

EDIT: comparison to take out, dine out

• $9,116.72 Dine out
• $3,073.67 Take out
• $6,644.35 wine (I would argue there is some wine expenses in Costco/Plum Market above that is probably not properly categorized. Maybe there is about $1500 in there that really should be wine instead of groceries.)

Sigh - those numbers seem quite high when combining it all together.

HCOL-VHCOL, 1 kid, 12 month averages

The bigger stuff ..

$2800 Health (this includes premiums, private docs, dental stuff)

$3100 Groceries (shifted a lot into here from prior dine out)

$1800 cars/insurance/gas

$1420 child care (and sports programs)

$600 (gyms, trainer)

$680 dine out

$510 wine

$350 subscriptions (you know, apple, hulu, cable, att, etc)

The smaller stuff - Cost decrease as it goes on by category with House Supplies 300, Food Takeout 230, Rand stuff 210, Department Stores 260, Clothing 175, Coffee 50

Excluding housing because that is quite different per situation. Also not including special annual expenses or "budget for one time stuff or gifts" - thats prob another $3K/month (includes vacation, bigger house purchases, etc)

Tracking all income, taxes, retirement/savings, business, W2, expenses to the penny so its pretty easy to see where it goes and what can be adjusted. Major adjustments for us had been food and dining, and it went more into groceries. Also cut coffee (to keep wine budget lol, wine will prob decrease due to doc telling me I need to stop)

lol yeah on coffee, used to be $400+ per month for "latte in the morning, maybe in the afternoon" x 2 for Mon-Fri hah ... when we looked at the monthly numbers we were like "yeah lets not do that"

per month with 3 month averages (also listing 12 months averages for comparison, similar purchase behavior overall but obviously inflation)

-$3,146.44 Groceries (-$2,227.64 12 month)

-$764.89 Food & Dining (-$629.00 12 month)

-$541.95 wine (-$551.44 12 months - not sure if drinking less or ...)

-$198.22 food take out (-$230.73 12 months)

-$143.27 coffee (-$70.89 12 months)

HCOL, 1 kid

this guy blockchains??

We provide the link before hand now (at the time of scheduling interview). Also discussion during interviews varies based on candidate. We used to do it less formal and a bit on the spot with a guided conversation - aka showing one of the main classes and then leading a dev down a path a little bit. For example: "Looking at the db transaction here, its on the entire method, do you think this can be improved?"

As mentioned, we just put this up barely 2 weeks ago when we saw the original post on reddit. Figured "its finally time to put it there and make it a bit more formal" since we had good success with this conversational style approach.

We also realize that its an interview, people will be very nervous and generally miss most of the points, so we want to see that we get some of them at least =). Long story short, even a 15 min conversation can be more than enough to gauge how well someone may perform.

Also, the code review aspect or TALKING through code is becoming a larger and larger item for our decisions to extend offers. We used to do more tech questions, still do that of course, but had more luck with finding the right candidate with this "lets talk about some tech" stuff.

Nice, we did something similar recently also inspired by a reddit post from last week I think. Finally formalized one of our test projects that we use for seniors. https://github.com/chaugner/spirebase-interview

It is 100% working code as described/expected but there are a MANY MANY things wrong with it. Its an endless list that could be discussed for prob 90 minutes with someone that knows what they are doing. From code issues, to requirements issues, to test issues.

You could theoretically ... the env in branches vs different repos is not as heavily debated for us as many other topics (lol). We opted for different repos, no one is complaining, not a big pain point. Also, different repos makes auditors happier for some reason (even with our secrets in vault).

Depending on your configurations (referring here to complexity) and also tooling used in different env. We have a bit of an antipattern by using different tools in prod env than we do in lets say staging or dev even. So its different configs and configs that only apply to a specific env. In stg you may decide to use a managed service for tool x vs prod you use on prem with different config settings.

If we had "same config everywhere but different resource names" then we prob started moving to branches vs repos. Also, most of those apps are not as container-native as we want them to be, aka carrying some baggage.

Main reason why we isolate configs for uat/prod is that different people are responsible for it. A lot of folks talk about "duplication" but its actually repetition, which is a great excuse for the same thing - but in reality its very different. Duplication is bad, repetition is not.

When looking at api-ops, we prefer isolation for simplicity and "putting things where they belong". I know most places are combining source and docker stuff in the same "project" - it makes sense and I have nothing against it.

Also, in regards to your problem with triggering on master changes, we actually solve this another way, we do checks in our build pipelines on whether or not a step has already executed. Imagine you want to build an artifact, push it to some artifact repo - if the artifact exists, skip this stage.

dir('docker/helloworld-api'){
    script {
        if (!isDockerInNexus("helloworld-api")) {
            buildAndPublish("helloworld-api");
        }
    }
}

Using a bit of an overkill for repo structure but its quite scalable and allows nice isolation between your various source vs build components.

1) Project (aka lets call it business app X) repo for infrastructure (aka the place it gets deployed to, generally terraform or other resource provisioning components in there).

2) A project may have multiple apps such as API and front end. Each one of those applications gets a set of repos.

2a) Repo for source and minimal build if applicable (for example java simply build the maven jar, no docker, no pipelines etc)

2b) repo for ops, this generally has all our build pipeline scripts like jenkinsfiles (yes we keep them outside of the project source), this is also where we have our docker files

2c) repos for each env configs

So for example, assume Project: OnlyFans Clone, we would have the following git repo structure.

• onlyfans-infrastructure
• zefans-api (actual devs building stuff, aka source)
• zefans-api-ops
• zefans-api-config-uat
• zefans-api-config-prod
• zefans-ui (actual devs building stuff, aka source)
• zefans-ui-ops
• zefans-ui-config-uat
• zefans-ui-config-prod

Note: ze fans just case I am german ... lol

Yes many will say its overkill but it allows us to make changes without stepping on each others toes. The project source is nicely isolated and has ZERO code for CI/CD, containers, nothing. Just a clean repo of source only with simple "run it locally like this" type of thing.

Our CI/CD is constantly evolving at much faster rates than any of our app source. Also, many will argue config repos. For us, we PR config and tie them to app versions and use that as triggers for deployment automation (aka git ops).

Only thing I remember getting ruined was my youngest picking up a pebble and trying to writing her name in my wife’s car fender while my wife was getting the other one buckled in her car seat. She just turned 3.

ROFL ... I can only imagine, such an innocent thing to do as a kid. "Look mama/papa, I can write" lol

I know ... once he figures out the grills come off, its all over. I am secretly hoping he will be well behaved ... (I know, I know, first time parent ... so innocent).

We may get a gate for the speakers area there.

yeah both wife and I are music lovers, been playing even when he was in the belly with headphones. And its really awesome that the little one gets super excited once the blue lights come on.

Also great excuse to go through the vinyl selection again "see what the little one likes" ... though I need to stop the wine that I keep on drinking while doing that.

not according to wifey lol

I am hoping I will be able to say the same as /u/HatesDuckTape and /u/timfrommass in a few years !! Will report back soon.

And the dancing, he loves dancing in the baby bjorn. It was all fun and games when he was little but an hour dancing with 20+ lbs ... it gets heavy.